The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 2

by George Mann

  Here and there massive cracks and gaps in the concrete had been filled in with tar-like black holes in a flat gray vacuum. Hand-made signs offered the services of motel chains or burger concessions and every few miles they were told how much closer they were to Prejean’s or Michaux’s where the music was still good and the gumbo even tastier. The fish had been enjoying a more varied diet. Zydeco and cajun, crawfish and boudin. Oo-oo. Oo-oo. Still having fon on the bayou… Everything still for sale. The Louisiana heritage.

  “Them Houston gals done got ma soul!” crooned Cathy. “Nearly home.”

  10. PIRATES OF THE UNDERSEAS

  At places where two road networks cross, a vertical interchange of bridges and tunnels will separate the traffic systems, and Palestinians from Israelis.

  -Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s

  Architecture of Occupation, 2007

  “Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents,” grumbled Mo, lying on the rug. He got up to sit down again at his keyboard. “Sorry, but that’s my experience.” He was writing about the authenticity of rules in the game of Risk. “I mean you have to give it a chance, don’t you? Or you’ll never know who you are.” He cast an absent-minded glance about the lab. He was in a world of his own.

  Miss Brunner came in wearing a white coat. “The kids called. They won’t be here until Boxing Day.”

  “Bugger,” said Mo. “Don’t they want to finish this bloody game?” He was suspicious. Had her snobbery motivated her to dissuade them, perhaps subtly, from coming? He already had her down as a social climber. Still, a climber was a climber. “Why didn’t you let them talk to me?”

  “You were out of it,” she said. “Or cycling or something. They thought you might be dead.”

  He shook his head. “There’s days I wonder about you.”

  Catherine Cornelius decided to step in. He was clearly at the end of his rope. “Can I ask a question, Mo?”

  He took a breath and began to comb his hair. “Be my guest.”

  “What’s this word?” She had been looking at Jerry’s notes. “Is this holes, hoes or holds?”

  “I think it’s ladies,” said Mo.

  “Oh, of course.” She brightened. “Little women. Concord, yes? The dangers of the unexamined life?”

  THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

  1. GUNS IS GUNS

  Everyone will be wealthy, living like a lord, Getting plenty of things today they can’t afford But when’s it going to happen? When? just by and by!

  Oh, everything will be lovely, when the pigs begin to fly!

  -Charles Lambourne, Everything Will be

  Lovely c. 1860

  “I admire a man who can look cool on a camel.” Bessy Burroughs presented Jerry with her perfectly rounded vowels. Born in Kansas, she had been educated in Sussex. Regular vowels, her dad had always said, were the key to success, no matter what your calling. “God! Is it always this hot in Cairo?”

  “It used to be lovely in the winter.” Jerry jumped down from his kneeling beast and came to help Bessy dismount. Only Karen von Krupp preferred to remain in her saddle. Shielding her eyes against the rising sun, she peered disdainfully at a distant clump of palms.

  Bessy had none of her father’s lean, lunatic wit. Her full name was Timobeth, a combination of those her parents had chosen for a girl or a boy. Bunny believed that old-fashioned names were an insult to the future. They pandered to history. Her parents still hated history. A sense of the past was but a step on the road to nostalgia and nostalgia, as Bunny was fond of saying, was a vice which corrupts and distorts.

  Jerry remembered his lazy lunches at Rules. Bunny had loved Rules. But he had come to hate the heritage industry as ‘a brothel disguised as a church’. Jerry wasn’t sure what he meant and had never had a chance to find out. If he turned up, as promised, by the Sphinx, perhaps this would be a good time to ask him.

  “Dad loves it out here.” Pulling her veil down from her hat, Bessy began to follow him across the hard sand towards the big pyramid. “Apart from the old stuff. He hates the old stuff. But he loves the beach. The old stuff can crumble to dust for all he cares.” She paused to wipe her massive cheeks and forehead. That last box of Turkish Delight was beginning to tell on her. She had been raised, by some trick of fate, by Bishop Beesley as his own daughter until Mitzi had finally objected and Bunny had been recalled from Tangier to perform his paternal duties.

  “You don’t like to be connected to the past?” asked Karen von Krupp, bringing up a lascivious lear and thwacking her “Charlie” on its rump with a curious-looking whip. “I love history. So romantic.”

  “Hate it. Loathe it. History disgusts me. Hello! Who’s this type, I wonder?”

  “Good god!” Suddenly fully awake, Jerry pushed back his hat. “Talk about history! It’s Major Nye.”

  Major Nye, in the full uniform of Skinner’s Horse, rode up at a clip and brought his gray to a skidding stop in the sand.

  “Morning, major.”

  “Morning, Cornelius. Where’s that hotel gone?”

  “I gather it had its day, major. Demolished. I can’t imagine what’s going up in its place.” His knees were crumping.

  “I can.” With a complacent hand Bessy patted a brochure she produced from a saddle bag. “It’s going to be like The Pyramid. That’s why I asked you all here. Only three times bigger. And in two buildings. You’ll be able to get up in the morning and look down on all that.” She waved vaguely in the direction of the pyramids. “It’ll be a knockout. It will knock you unconscious! Really!” She nodded vigorously, inviting them, by her example, to smile.

  “Gosh,” said Jerry. Major Nye peered gravely down at his horse’s mane.

  “We are born unconscious and we die unconscious.” Karen von Krupp gestured with her whip. “In between we suffer precisely because we are conscious, whereas the other creatures with whom we share this unhappy planet are unconscious forever, no? I was not. I am. I shall not be. Is this the past, present, and future? Is this what we desire from Time?”

  “I must apologize, dear lady. I’m not following you, I fear.”

  “This hotel I’m talking about. Two big pyramids. Sheraton are interested already.”

  “Ah, but the security.” Karen von Krupp laid her whip against her beautiful leg and arranged her pleated skirt. “These days. What can you guarantee?”

  “No problem. Saudis.”

  “I prefer Nubians,” said Jerry.

  “These will be Saudis. That’s non-negotiable.”

  Jerry looked up. From the far horizon came the steady thump of helicopter engines, then the sharper thwacking of their blades. He had a feeling about this. “Nubians or nothing,” he said. And began to run back towards his camel.

  2. THE BRANDY AND SELTZER BOYS

  According to quantum theory, a card perfectly balanced on its edge will fall down in what is known as a “superposition” - the card really is in two places at once. If a gambler bets money on the queen landing face up, the gambler’s own state changes to become a superposition of two possible outcomes - winning or losing the bet in either of these parallel worlds, the gambler is unaware of the other outcome and feels as if the card fell randomly.

  -Nature, 5 July 2007

  “We need rituals, Jerry. We need repetition. We need music and mythology and the constant reassurance that at certain times of the day we can visit the waterhole in safety. Without ritual, we are worthless. That’s what the torturer knows when he takes away even the consistent repetition of our torment.” Bunny Burroughs ordered another beer. There were still a few minutes to Curtain Up. This was to be the first time Gloria Cornish and Una Persson had appeared on the same stage. A revival. The Arcadians.

  “These are on me.” Jerry signed for the bill. “Repetition is a kind of death. It’s what hopeless people do - what loonies do - sitting and rocking and muttering the same meaningless mantras over and over again. That’s not conscious life.”

  “We don’t want conscious life.” Mi
ss Brunner, coming in late, gave her coat to Bishop Beesley to take to the cloakroom. “Have I got time for a quick G&T? We don’t want real variety. From the catch-phrase of the comedian to the reiteration of familiar opinions, they’re the beating of a mother’s heart, the breathing of a sleeping father.”

  “Maybe we’ve at last dispossessed ourselves of the past. We name our children after bathroom products, fantasy characters, drugs, diseases, and candy bars. We used to name them after saints or popular politicians…” Jerry finished his beer. A bell began to ring.

  “That’s just a different kind of continuity. The trusted brand has taken over from the trusted saint.” Miss B. picked up her programme. “We’re still desperate for the familiar. We try to discard it in favor of novelty, but it isn’t really novelty, it’s just another kind of familiarity. We tell ourselves of our self-expression and self-assertion. When I was a girl, my days were counted in terms of food. Sunday was a hot joint. Tuesday was cold sliced meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. Wednesday was shepherd’s pie. Thursday was cauliflower cheese. Friday was fish. Saturday, we had a mixed grill. Just as lessons came and went at school, we attended the Saturday matinee, Sunday at a museum. Something uplifting, anyway, on Sunday. We move forward by means of rituals. We just try to find the means of keeping the carousel turning. We sing worksongs as we build roads. Music allows a semblance of progression, but it isn’t real progression. Real progress leads where? To the grave, if we’re lucky? Our stories are the same, with minor variations. We’re comfortable, with minor variations, in the same clothes. The sun comes up and sets at the same time and we welcome the rise and fall of the workman’s hammer, the beat of the drum. If we really wanted to cut our ties with the past we would do the only logical thing. We would kill ourselves.”

  “Isn’t that just as boring?”

  “Oh, I guess so, Mr. Cornelius.” Bunny petted at his face and put down his empty glass.

  As they walked towards their box, the overture was striking up.

  3. FROM CLUE TO CLUE

  The theme of the Wandering Jew has a history of centuries behind it, and many are the romances which that sinister and melancholy figure has flitted through. In this story you will see how the coming of the mythical Wanderer was a direct threat to the existence of our Empire, and how, when he, as the figurehead of revolt faded out of the picture, Sexton Blake tackled the real causes behind it.

  -The Case of the Wandering Jew,

  Sexton Blake Annual, 1940

  “I’m running out of memory.” Jerry put his head on one side, like a parrot. “Or at best storage. I’m forgetting things. I think I might have something.”

  “Oh, god, don’t give it to us.” Miss Brunner became contemplative. “Is it catching? Like Alzheimer’s?”

  “I don’t remember.” Jerry took an A to Z from the pocket of his black car coat. “It depends if it’s the past or the present. Or the future. I remember where Berwick Street is in Soho and I could locate Decatur Street. I’m not losing my bearings any worse than usual. Why is everyone trying to forget?”

  “It wasn’t part of the plan. I’m a bit new to this.” Bunny Burroughs glanced hopefully at Miss Brunner. “I think.”

  Now Jerry really was baffled. “Plan?”

  “The plan for America. Remember Reagan?”

  “Vaguely,” said Jerry. He pointed ahead of him. “If that’s not a mirage, we’ve found an oasis.”

  4. THE NEW XJ-LUXURY TRANSFORMED BY DESIGN

  Freighter captains avoid them as potential catastrophes; climate scientists see them as a bellwether of global warming. But now marine biologists have a more positive take on the thousands of icebergs that have broken free from Antarctica in recent years. These frigid, starkly beautiful mountains of floating ice turn out to be bubbling hot spots of biological activity. And in theory at least they could help counteract the buildup of greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.

  -Michael D. Lemonick, Time Magazine,

  6 August 2007

  “They’ve been in Trinity churchyard digging up the famous. I can’t tell you how much they got for Audubon.” Jerry sipped his chicory and coffee. The Cafe du Monde wasn’t what it had been but they’d taken the worst of the rust off the chairs and the joss sticks helped. From somewhere down by the river came the broken sound of a riverboat bell. Then he began to smile at his friend across the table. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Max Pardon shrugged. “We were downsized. What can I say? We have to make a living as best we can. The bottom dropped out of real estate. I’m a bone broker these days, Mr. Cornelius. It’s an honest job. Some of us still have an interest in our heritage. Monsieur Audubon was a very great man. He made his living, you could say, as a resurrectionist. Mostly. He killed that poor, mad golden eagle. Do I do anything worse?”

  Jerry took a deep breath and regretted it.

  5. THE FLOODS THAT REALLY MATTER ARE COMPOSED OF MIGRANT LABOUR

  Intimate talk about loving your age, finding true joy, and the three words that can change your life.

  -Good Housekeeping, June 2005

  In Islamabad, Jerry traded his Banning for an antique Lee-Enfield .303 with a telescopic sight. He had come all the way by aerial cruiser, the guest of Major Nye, with the intention of seeing, if he could do it secretly, his natural son Hussein, who was almost ten. Slipping the beautifully embellished rifle into his cricket bag, he made for an address on Kabul Street, ridding himself of two sets of “shadows”. The most recent Islamic government were highly suspicious of all Europeans, even though Jerry’s Turkish passport gave his religion as Moslem. He wore a beautifully cut coat in two shades of light blue silk, with a set of silver buttons and a turban in darker blue. To the casual eye he resembled a prosperous young stockbroker, perhaps from Singapore.

  Arriving at Number Eight, Jerry made his way through a beautiful courtyard to a shaded staircase which he climbed rapidly after a glance behind him to see if he was followed. On the third floor at the door furthest along the landing he stopped and knocked. Almost immediately the recently painted door was opened and Bunny Burroughs let him in, his thin lips twisting as he recognized the cricket bag.

  “Your fifth attempt, I understand, Jerry. Did you have a safe trip? And will you be playing your usual game this Sunday?”

  “If I can find some whites.” Jerry set the bag down and removed his rifle. With his silk handkerchief he dabbed at his sleeve. “Oil. Virgin. Is the boy over there?”

  “With his nanny. The mother, as I told you, is visiting her uncle.”

  Jerry peered through the slats of a blind. Across the courtyard, at a tall window, a young woman in a sari was mixing a glass of diluted lemon juice and sugar. Behind her the blue screen of a TV was showing an old Humphrey Bogart movie.

  “Casablanca,” murmured Bunny.

  “The Big Sleep.” Jerry lifted the rifle to his shoulder and put his eye close to the sight.

  He would never know another sound like that which followed his pulling the trigger and the bang the gun made.

  He had done the best he could. That at least he understood.

  6. THE PHANTOM OF THE TOWERS

  International trade in great white sharks now will be regulated, which is especially important for fish that range far beyond the shelter of regional protection. The humphead or Napoleon wrasse-worth tens of thousands of dollars on the market-also received protections, in turn saving coral reefs from the cyanide used to capture them.

  -Animal Update, Winter 2005

  Hubert Lane and Violet Elizabeth Bott were waiting on the corner for Jerry as soon as he reached the outskirts of the village. He had driven over from Hadley to see old Mr. Brown. Hubert smirked when he saw Jerry’s Phantom IV. “You’ve done a lot better for yourself than anyone would have guessed a few years ago.”

  Jerry ignored him.

  “Hewwo, Jewwy,” lisped Violet Elizabeth, rather grotesquely coy for her age. “Wovely to see you.”

  Jerry scowled. He was alread
y regretting his decision but he opened the gate and began to walk up the surprisingly overgrown path. The Browns clearly hadn’t kept their gardener on. Things had deteriorated rather a lot since 1978. The front door of the double fronted Tudor-style detached house could do with a lick of paint. The brass needed a polish, too. He lifted the knocker.

  The door was opened by a woman in uniform.

  “Mr. ‘Cornelius?’”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mr. Brown said you were coming. He’s upstairs. I’m the District Nurse. I hung on specially. This way.”

  She moved her full lips in a thin, professional smile and took him straight upstairs. The house smelled familiar and the wallpaper hadn’t changed since his last visit. Mrs. Brown had been alive then. The older children, Ethel and Robert, had been home from America and Australia respectively.

  “They’re expected any time,” said the nurse when he asked. She opened the bedroom door. Now the medicinal smell overwhelmed everything else. Old Mr. Brown was completely bald. His face was much thinner. Jerry no longer had any idea of his age. He looked a hundred.

  “Hello, boy.” Mr. Brown’s voice was surprisingly vibrant. “Nice of you to drop in.” His smile broadened. “Hoping for a tip were you?”

  “Crumbs!” said Jerry.

  7. A GAME OF PATIENCE